BMW 3 Series: 40 years old, and still the ultimate driving machine

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ars.AD.queue.push(["xrailTop", {sz:"300x251", kws:["bottom"], collapse: true}]);BMW’s sector-defining 3 Series has turned 40, so the start of the story is in 1975—except it isn’t. You have to go back much further: past the early '70s when work began on the first 3 Series, and even back beyond the 1966 predecessor that set the pattern for compact BMWs. You have to reverse all the way back to 1959.

In the 1950s, BMW’s curiously bipolar range of cars had grand, expensive "Baroque Angel" saloons at one end, tiny two-cylinder BMW Isetta bubble cars at the other, and almost nothing in between. In 1959 German industrialists Harald and Herbert Quandt took control of the company and gave it the cash injection it needed to create a new medium-size saloon, the 1961 Neue Klasse (new class).

With monocoque construction, independent suspension, and peppy overhead cam engines, the Neue Klasse sold well and quickly spawned both larger-engined derivatives and a smaller, cheaper car based on the same engines and running gear. The two-door 1.6-litre 1600-2 arrived in 1966, followed in 1968 by the definitive 2.0L 2002. More than 800,000 were built in the 1960s and 1970s, and they established a blend of compact size, tidy handling and swift performance which would become the cornerstone of the 3 Series' appeal.